[dramatic music]
- As atomic fear grips the world
and the Cold War ramps up,
a well-dressed man is found dead on an Australian beach.
♪ ♪
- There's no clear cause of death,
nothing to identify him.
Who is this guy? And what was he up to?
Could he have been a criminal or a secret agent or worse?
- Neither the FBI nor Britain's MI5 know who he is.
Tonight, the top theories surrounding a mystery
that's obsessed an army of sleuths for 70 years.
- Is he a spy?
- Was it self-inflicted or was he poisoned?
- Was he part of a criminal organization?
- The whole thing reads like--like a movie script.
- Can new evidence solve the case
to finally answer who is the Somerton man
and how did he die?
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
Just three years after the end of World War II,
tensions between the Soviet Union
and its former allies
lead to a blockade of all land routes to West Berlin
and an all-out effort to airlift supplies
to its stricken citizens.
- People in the west
are shocked and frightened by this.
Communist countries like the Soviet Union in Eurasia
and Mao Zedong in China seem scarily impressive.
Will there be another war?
Another nuclear attack?
In response,
stories about spies, traders, double agents
spring up everywhere.
Fishburne: The small city of Adelaide, Australia
is no different.
Situated just 500 miles
from the nation's top secret atomic testing site,
the city is quietly on alert.
♪ ♪
At first, nothing seems unusual
when 16-year-old Neil Day and a friend
spot a man who appears to be napping
by a cliff on Somerton Beach.
- Now, in Australia, it's the southern hemisphere,
so it's summertime in the wintertime months here.
And so, this is nothing new. It's hot out.
A lot of people will sleep on the beach.
So they continue on their ride.
Fishburne: But as the pair pass by again,
they notice something alarming.
The man isn't moving.
- He's still in the same position,
so they dismount, they go up to check him.
And then, at that point, they know he's dead.
Another bystander comes up: Jack Lyons.
He's a local jeweler.
Jack takes control of the situation and he says,
"I'll take care of this. I'll notify the police."
And that's exactly what he does.
And that's about 6:00 a.m. to 6:30 in the morning.
- So when the police arrive at the scene,
they do a cursory inspection of the crime scene and the body.
And they notice that this man is lying in the beach
but sitting up with his back lean against the seawall.
They see that he's well-dressed.
There's no evidence of alcohol or drugs around,
and there's no obvious signs of wounds or violence.
- Most often, when we find a body on the beach,
it's a victim of drowning.
The body is washed ashore, and that's not the case.
He was completely dry. His shoes were dry.
Looks like he just maybe lay there to take a rest
and didn't wake up.
- The next step would be to identify the man
and then notify the next of kin,
but in this case, they can't do that
because he has absolutely no ID on him at all.
He has no wallet of any kind.
And moreover-- And this is where this case
initially gets very strange right from the beginning--
All of the labels on his clothing
were intentionally removed, as is they were clipped out.
♪ ♪
At this point, the investigators are asking,
"Who is this guy?"
They have no answers on his identity.
Fishburne: With little to go on,
police catalog the man's belongings.
- They find a unused train ticket.
They find a bus ticket from Adelaide to Somerton Beach.
They find a pack of chewing gum, a pack of matches,
a comb,
and they find a box of Army Club cigarettes.
So all of these things are ordinary things
that you would find on any person,
but the pack of cigarettes are interesting
because Army Club is a very cheap brand.
And inside the box of cigarettes
were seven cigarettes
of a much more expensive brand called Kensitas.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The body is taken to the Royal Adelaide Hospital
for further examination.
- So a Dr. Barkley Bennett
performs a post-mortem on the body.
It's an initial look-through
without going too deep into taking samples
and opening the body up to find the cause of death.
Back then, not everybody has an autopsy.
- The initial examination of his body
reveals some things about him.
He's about 5'11".
He weighs about 165 to 175.
And he's between 40 and 50 years old
in incredibly good shape.
Also, his hands are not calloused in any way,
suggesting that he wasn't a manual laborer of any sort.
- One of the other things they notice right away
is that he's got these extremely large calves,
and the muscles are high.
Like a ballet dancer, he's got tuned legs.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Nothing seems strange
and there's no obvious sign of foul play.
- So their theory is, is that he went to lay down,
maybe didn't feel well,
laid up against the rocks and passed away in his sleep.
- Preliminarily, the cause of death
is thought to be heart failure.
♪ ♪
[flatlines]
Fishburne: But after six weeks,
authorities still can't ID the corpse,
and that raises questions.
- Detective suspect that there may be a lot more to learn
about this man and the way he died.
Fishburne: They start to wonder,
is he from some place outside Australia?
And, if so, why is he here?
- All English-speaking countries
are given a post-mortem photo and a set of fingerprints,
but nobody can find a match.
There's no police records for this man.
There are no military records for this man.
Nothing matches.
- In fact, J. Edgar Hoover,
who was the director of the FBI at the time,
sends a memo back to Australian police,
telling them that they have no match for those fingerprints.
Fishburne: Police appeal to the public
for help identifying the body.
- At this point in the investigation,
the locals have given this man a nickname,
the Somerton Man,
referencing the beach where he was discovered.
An eye witness comes forward.
He and his wife claim that they were walking on the beach
the night before, on November 30th,
and they observed him about 7:00 p.m. lying on the beach.
The Somerton Man supposedly raised his right arm,
as if to light his cigarette or wave,
and then it fell back to the beach.
♪ ♪
- And then, there's another couple that saw the man,
although they didn't really see his face.
One thing they did notice, though,
is that he seemed to have polished, nice shoes,
and they didn't seem like shoes
that belonged to somebody who'd be walking along the beach.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: A timeline of the man's final hours
slowly starts to form.
- Because of the tickets in his pocket,
we know that he arrived around 11:00 a.m. in Adelaide.
Then, he took a bus to the Somerton area,
where he's seen again by our witnesses at 7:00 p.m.
So there's a large part of his afternoon
and his whereabouts that are not accounted for.
As an investigator,
it's very frustrating to have this collection of clues
and evidence and eyewitness accounts
and really be no closer to any substantive answers.
At this point, they don't even know who this man is.
But then, the investigators catch a huge break.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: On January 14th 1949,
authorities at Adelaide Railway Station
realize a suitcase has been there for weeks.
- The suitcase was checked in on November 30th
and remained unclaimed.
They give it over to the police,
who start looking through it,
and that's when they find some additional clues,
which now makes them think
that maybe there's some connection
to the Somerton Man.
Fishburne: What's inside the suitcase is odd and alarming.
- The labels on all the clothing inside the suitcase
have also been removed, just like the Somerton Man,
with the exception of one yellow shirt
that still had the tags on it,
as if it had just been purchased.
There's a quantity of orange linen thread,
the same type of orange thread
that was used to sew on his buttons
and mend a pocket inside his trousers.
- And the thread that was in the case,
they believe is the same one used to repair the jacket.
This makes a direct connection to the Somerton Man
and the suitcase that was found.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: The suitcase also raises additional questions.
- This orange linen thread
was not available in Australia at the time.
It was available in the United States.
So this poses the question: was the man American,
or did he at least travel through America at one point?
Also discovered inside the suitcase
was an electrician screwdriver,
a table knife, a pair of scissors,
and also charting and stenciling tools,
that which you would find aboard a ship
to stencil cargo or to help with navigation.
Fishburne: But the most important clue of all
may be a name.
- There are a couple of items inside the suitcase
that are inscribed T. Keane.
- So this gives the police something to go on,
a name at least,
and that name is Keane, K-E-A-N-E.
Fishburne: Finding T. Keane won't be easy,
and perhaps that's deliberate.
- Police are starting to build a profile of this guy
and perhaps a story why he was there.
Who is this Keane?
- Inquiries find no missing persons by the name of Keane.
And so, now they think that maybe this might be alias.
- But, at this point, there's a name that doesn't match up.
No one's missing. It could be a ruse.
The police had a suitcase full of clues
and they have some evidence,
but there is nothing there that really ties to the reason
why the Somerton Man was visiting Adelaide.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Increasingly suspicious,
police call for a detailed autopsy.
- Once they started the autopsy,
they do come across some things
that are unusual and shocking for them.
This enlarged spleen that's three times larger
than what it should be.
They find his liver is congested.
And he's got blood in his stomach.
- Because of the conditions of the organs,
pathologist John Dwyer suspects
that this man could be the victim of poisoning.
♪ ♪
- They think it's poison because
this man has no outside injuries.
He's got all this internal trauma going on.
What caused that?
If he had been hit by something,
he'd have an external bruise.
- Also, in his stomach,
aside from the presence of blood is also a pasty,
which is sort of like an Australian meat pie.
- They can tell what it was.
And the meat is not digested,
which implies that he ate that and died shortly after.
- If it turns out this is a poisoning,
that's a huge red flag.
This is not your everyday manner of death.
And what it suggests is this guy
could have been up to something nefarious.
♪ ♪
- When the lab results come back,
they show no evidence of poisoning
and no evidence of poisoning in the Australian meat pasty.
His organs are in terrible condition post-autopsy,
and the police know that they're gonna have
to do a lot more digging to find out
what happened to this person, who is he, and how did he die.
Fishburne: Investigators next take a closer look
at the man's clothing.
- Deep down inside the man's watch pocket,
they found a tiny, rolled-up piece of paper.
It had to be extracted with tweezers
because it was so far down,
which is why they didn't find it the first time.
But when they unroll it, there are some words on it.
And the words are "tamám shud."
♪ ♪
- That stopped the press this time.
We got to find out what this is.
What does this mean?
- They contact local librarians and researchers
to just ask around
if anybody knows what this means.
One of the librarians mentions that,
"Yes, it is the last word in a book called
the "Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám."
♪ ♪
- The "Rubáiyát" is a book of love poems.
The phrase "tamám shud" translates into
"it is finished."
♪ ♪
- It's not normal for someone
to walk around with a line of poetry
that says "it is finished" in their pocket.
This is something that was placed there.
Now, whether it was by the Somerton Man
or by someone who wanted him dead,
that's what's worth exploring.
Fishburne: But who might want him dead, and why?
- Looking at his belongings--
Stenciling tools, maps,
his clothing is clearly from America
which they see based on the stitching,
and an alias, potentially--
Taking all of these clues together,
it's not unreasonable to think that he may have been involved
in the black market as a smuggler.
- And, if so, did he become problematic
for some other criminals that want to see him gone?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Armed with new evidence,
authorities begin an official homicide inquest
on June 17th, 1949.
- An inquest is sort of like a trial.
There are witnesses, experts, and doctors
that will come and testify,
and a judge or jury will determine a cause of death.
- So they're revisiting
the possibility of him being poisoned.
- One of the experts that testifies in this inquest
is Sir Cedric Hicks.
He's a professor of pharmacology
and human physiology.
And, to his knowledge,
whatever toxin was there evaporated quickly.
It left no trace.
But he has an idea of two untraceable toxins
that may be the cause here.
- He's so afraid to say these poisons out loud
during the inquest because they're so dangerous
that he writes them down on a piece of paper
and delivers it to the judge.
Later on, these two toxins become known,
and they are digitalis and strophanthin.
- Hicks believes it's strophanthin.
It's derived from an African plant.
Somali tribes would use it to poison their arrows.
Fishburne: Despite Hick's testimony,
on June 21st,
the inquest concludes without determining a cause of death.
- They just don't have enough evidence to say
if he was poisoned by himself or someone else.
They don't know who this man is.
They can't determine if he was a smuggler or not,
or if he's tied to some other greater mystery.
And so, they're stuck in a quandary.
Fishburne: Back at square one,
police revisit the cryptic piece of paper
found in the man's pocket.
- The most mysterious clue is the phrase "tamám shud."
It's torn from a book that was very popular at the time.
If investigators can find the man's original book,
they may find more clues.
- We know it's not in his possession.
We know it wasn't at the crime scene.
We know that it's not in his suitcase
that was discovered at the Adelaide Railway Station.
Fishburne: Investigators search every library
and bookstore in the area.
♪ ♪
- They begin looking at publishing companies,
they begin searching internationally--
Anywhere that they can think to find this copy
and this edition of the "Rubáiyát."
In a last-ditch effort, they call upon the public
to see if anybody has seen this copy of the book.
There are hundreds of thousands of copies of the book
floating around the world.
Trying to find the copy that was used in this case
is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Fishburne: That is until July 22nd, 1949.
♪ ♪
- An unidentified man walks into the police station.
This man lives very nearby to Somerton Beach.
♪ ♪
He remembers that somebody had thrown a copy of a book
in the backseat of his car on November 30th.
♪ ♪
He puts two and two together.
He retrieves the copy of the book
and he brings it into the police station.
Fishburne: Police attempt to match the torn scrap of paper
to the book's damaged back page.
♪ ♪
- When the police examine the book,
they can tell that the tear from the book
matches exactly with the rolled up piece of paper
in the Somerton Man's pocket.
They can tell microscopically, by the fibers,
it's the copy that the Somerton Man had.
It's a very easy mesh. That, they know for sure now.
Fishburne: And just as investigators had hoped,
the book is about to provide an incredible new clue
to the Somerton Man's identity.
♪ ♪
- Finding the actual book that belonged to the Somerton Man
is a miraculous twist of fate in this case
because they are able to begin
piecing some new clues together
that they had no idea even existed before.
There are notes written in the book.
And then, most interestingly perhaps,
there is a series of letters in the back of the book,
capital letters that seem to be some sort of code.
- When you look at the coded message in the book
and all other factors
surrounding the Somerton Man's case,
it then leads to the big question:
is he a spy?
♪ ♪
- At the time,
Australia is ramping up their own nuclear testing,
so the idea is entirely plausible.
- Using books to deliver hidden codes
seems like it's next-level spying,
but the truth is, this was quite common,
especially in 1948.
The CIA did it, the KGB, Israeli intelligence.
- So what happens is that the sender,
they'll take the words out of the book on certain pages
and they use that to compose the message they want to send.
The receiver will have a card that will have holes cut out,
basically acting as a template
that they can put over the desired page,
and that will reveal the message underneath
and the words
and the order that they're supposed to be received.
Fishburne: Authorities send the code
to various intelligence agencies around the world,
hoping someone will recognize it.
- They send it to the U.S. Naval intelligence.
They send it to British intelligence.
They publish it in newspapers,
hoping that an amateur sleuth might be able to solve this.
The code is only four lines,
but the best codebreakers in the world
can't figure this out.
You don't even need to really figure out the code
to indicate that there is some sort of larger espionage
going on.
If we are to believe that he's a spy,
that very well could be what caused his death.
♪ ♪
- He was clearly a careful guy, which is evidenced by the fact
of the removal of his clothing labels,
the fact that he uses an alias.
Fishburne: But according to experts,
the most important proof is where and how the man died.
- So there's two really important locations
in Australia, which make this even more interesting.
One is Woomera,
which is home of an advanced rocketry program
involving the United States,
as well as Australian military authorities.
The other is Radium Hill,
which is home to a uranium processing facility.
The location of the Somerton Man's body
close to these facilities in Australia
isn't coincidental in my view.
- The UK is also preparing
to start atomic testing in Australia,
800 kilometers from Adelaide.
And there's some evidence
that secrets are already being leaked from Australia
to the USSR.
- There's a top secret intelligence program
called Venona.
It's a joint American-British operation,
and it's designed to do counterintelligence.
In 1947, the Venona project was able to pick up evidence
that Russian intelligence operations
were taking place in Australia
through its embassy in Canberra.
So we have a code
that suggests the man may have been a spy.
We have the location, which certainly suggests
that the man may have been a spy.
And most interesting to me is the fact
that he appears to have died from an exotic poison,
which is absolutely spycraft
and certainly suggests the possibility
of this being what's referred to as a "wet op,"
"mokroye delo" in Russian,
which is a kind of time-honored tradition
by Russian intelligence
to get rid of people by means of assassination
without leaving any kind of obvious hallmarks.
Fishburne: Could a seemingly insignificant piece
of evidence be the key to cracking this case?
- The cigarette clue is a fascinating one
where they discover in his possession, his cigarettes,
there's a different kind of cigarette brand
in the box of his cigarettes,
which seemed to indicate that someone had replaced them.
- This is a cheap box of cigarettes,
and inside the box are an expensive brand.
So why would anyone wanna do that?
Is it possible that the man was poisoned
and that the delivery system for the poison
was the cigarettes?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Unfortunately, the Australian police
discard the cigarettes before they can be analyzed.
- And that's a real shame because the cigarettes
could have provided a quintessential detail
that may have solved this case.
If the cigarettes were tested and we could prove
that there was poison in the cigarettes,
explaining why there were different cigarettes
in the box,
it would certainly support a theory
that he was involved in spycraft
and he was murdered for that.
Fishburne: But if the Somerton Man is a spy,
who was he working for?
- There is some speculation out there
that he was not just anybody
but that he was a particular agent named Pavel Fedosimov.
Fedosimov was known as Stefan. That's his code name.
He was known to British and American intelligence.
Fishburne: Fedosimov was identified as a KGB spy
during Operation Venona.
- Fedosimov was stationed
at the Russian embassy in the United States.
And we know for sure that the Somerton Man
had at least traveled in the United States.
The U.S. was tracking Fedosimov,
and they follow him, and they know that he,
at least theoretically, leaves the country on a ship
bound for Odessa in Ukraine in 1948.
And some people have placed Fedosimov in Australia,
although the evidence is very scant.
Fishburne: After the Somerton Man's body is found
on December 1st, 1948,
Fedosimov is never seen again.
♪ ♪
- Can you say that Fedosimov and the Somerton Man
are one and the same?
You can't rule it out, that's absolutely true,
but I don't think there's enough evidence
to say that conclusively.
Fishburne: But there may be another way
to identify the Somerton Man.
- There's one more clue in that book
that might be even more important.
Fishburne: And it could lead police straight to his killer.
♪ ♪
- A dead body, a book of poetry,
and an unsolvable code.
After eight months of investigation
into the Somerton Man,
police have little else to go on.
But in his copy of the Rubáiyát,"
there is one more clue:
a pair of handwritten phone numbers.
Can this finally lead investigators to answers?
[dramatic music]
- The other clue is what appears to be
two phone numbers written inside the book.
- The police decided to call these two phone numbers.
The first is to a bank, which is a dead end.
The second number belongs to a woman who lives nearby,
in fact, only 400 yards
from where the Somerton Man was found on the beach.
Fishburne: Police visit the woman
and try to find out what she knows.
[dramatic music]
- And she agrees to cooperate,
but she wants to remain anonymous.
She tells the police
that she does not know the Somerton Man,
but she does admit that she owned a copy of the "Rubáiyát"
that she gave to a male acquaintance
some years earlier.
- She was training as a nurse in 1945 in Sydney
when she met someone named Al Boxall.
They became friendly.
She gave him a copy of the "Rubáiyát"
and she inscribed it with her nickname "Jestyn,"
but she hasn't spoken with him in years.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Could Boxall be the Somerton Man?
- So, of course, the authorities think
perhaps this acquaintance of hers
who received the "Rubáiyát," maybe that's the Somerton Man.
However, a few days later, they follow up on a lead
and they find that he's alive and well.
♪ ♪
- The plot really thickens
when one looks at Boxall's background
during World War II and afterwards, from 1945 to 1948,
Boxall is involved in Australian intelligence.
♪ ♪
I think the intrigue is even greater
when the two stories of "Jestyn" and Boxall
are put side by side.
"Jestyn" says that they met one another in the army hospital,
and according to Boxall, the exchange of the book happens
at the Clifton Gardens Hotel over drinks.
Fishburne: To investigators, that location sounds familiar.
♪ ♪
- What's interesting is that
if we're to believe Boxall's version of the story,
where the book is exchanged
at the Clifton Garden Hotel in August of 1945,
just two months earlier, in June of 1945,
the body of George Marshall is found
with a copy of the "Rubáiyát"
a short walk from that very hotel.
♪ ♪
- Not only is the copy of the "Rubáiyát," there,
but he's also found near a bottle of lemonade
and some mysterious powder,
which leads some people to think
that it may have also been a poisoning.
And that's too similar for coincidence
between the Somerton Man and Marshall's death.
Fishburne: Two bodies found dead on Australian beaches,
both tied to the same book and possibly the same woman.
Police decide to question the mysterious "Jestyn"
once again.
- This woman really was a quintessential part
of the investigation.
And what's particularly interesting
about all the great work they did in the case
is that before the Somerton Man is buried,
they make a plaster cast of him
to preserve the way he looks before decomposition.
They bring in "Jestyn" to view the cast.
Initially, when she looks at it,
she claims that she doesn't recognize the cast
when all of her body language suggests otherwise.
- When Detective Sergeant Leane
showed the woman the plaster bust,
his reaction was that
she looked like she was completely taken aback,
like she appeared to be about to faint.
In fact, some reports say that he was standing behind her,
ready to catch her if she did.
So then, this begs the question:
did she have any involvement in his death?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: "Jestyn" convinces police
not to release her name publicly.
- So why didn't she want her name out in the open?
It's very possible that she didn't want
her relationship with Boxall to be known by her husband.
- But I think there's another factor at play here,
which is pretty basic.
In 1949, many people didn't imagine
that women could be involved in espionage.
So they honor her request for an anonymity,
and in the process, kind of pass by the whole possibility
that she's involved in more ways than one.
Fishburne: It isn't until years later
that the woman's identity is revealed.
- For decades, people have referred to her as "Jestyn,"
which is the nickname used in the police records.
It took decades' worth of sleuthing,
both by police who were involved in the case
and by some amateurs, to put two and two together
and to figure out the real identity.
- After her death in 2007,
we learned that upon her initial interview,
she gave her name as Jessica Thomson,
but even that wasn't her real name.
- She was born Jesse Harkness in Sydney,
and she goes by the name Jo.
♪ ♪
When she passes away in 2007, she's gone her entire life
insisting that she knows nothing about this case.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But Thomson's secrets
don't end with her death.
- In 2013, Jo's daughter, Kate Thomson,
gives an interview for Australian "60 Minutes"
where she makes two very important claims
that may relate to this case:
one, that her mother did admit to her
that she knew the Somerton Man,
and two, that she spoke Russian
and she taught it to Russian immigrants in Australia.
♪ ♪
- And that fueled the fire
that Somerton Man may, in fact, be a KGB operative
or KGB associate of some sort.
And that's led to, since 2013,
a whole bunch of questions again
about the identity of the Somerton Man.
- There are a number of theories
about who the Somerton Man was.
The spy theory, the black market trader theory.
But I think there are clues
that take us away from those theories.
[dramatic music]
- Abbott's theory begins in his classroom.
- My students are well-versed in coding theory.
And so, I gave it as a cool exercise to them
to look at this code,
check out what were the codes in World War II
that were known at the time,
and eliminate one by one which codes it couldn't be.
And statistically, it shows that it's really not a code.
It's just the first letters of words in the English language.
So what could that be?
It could just be an aide-mémoire,
somebody just jotting down the first letters of words
to remember something.
But the interesting thing is, there's four lines of them
and it's in a book of love poetry
where every verse was in four lines.
So it makes you wonder
whether he was just trying to pen his own verse.
Was he being romantic towards a young lady
who lived five minutes' walk
from where the man was found dead.
And he had her phone number.
Joining the dots there,
there perhaps was a connection between the two.
Perhaps this is a love story.
Fishburne: Or something entirely different.
♪ ♪
- In the case of the Somerton Man,
it could very well be that they had a relationship.
She gave him this book,
which has very romantic poems in it--
Poems about seizing the day,
about being together while the world is so difficult.
And they're in love.
- But their relationship ends.
And then, many years later,
the man shows up, in 1948,
looking to rekindle
or somehow address his relationship with her.
She doesn't want anything to do with it.
And, you know, heartbroken, decides to end his life
by poisoning himself on the beach.
Fishburne: But if the Somerton Man
committed suicide by self-poison,
the question is why.
♪ ♪
- Back in 1948,
Jo Thomson was involved in a relationship
with a man named Prosper Thomson,
her soon-to-be husband.
And they had a 16-month-old child
named Robin Thomson.
- But here's the interesting part:
Jo Thomson becomes pregnant in 1946,
and a true timeline cannot be established
as to when Jo and Prosper Thomson met.
- It appears that in 1946,
when she became pregnant in Sydney,
she was in nursing quarters
training as a nurse in a hospital.
♪ ♪
- Prosper Thomson was living
a few hundred miles away at the time.
- So this timeline raises questions
about the lineage of Robin Thomson.
- Some would suggest
that it was a twisted, triangular relationship.
The whole thing reads like a movie script, frankly.
Fishburne: Abbott believes that Robin could be the key
to proving the Somerton Man's identity
and providing a motive for his death.
- The interesting thing about Robin Thomson is
he was a professional ballet dancer.
I recalled that one of the people
that had examined the Somerton Man's body in the mortuary
had noted that the Somerton Man
had extremely strong calf muscles
that were high up the leg like that of a ballet dancer.
Fishburne: And the similarities don't end there.
♪ ♪
- So only about 2% of the population
have what they call "hyperdontia,"
where they're missing teeth because of genetics.
Well, the Somerton Man is missing two incisor teeth.
And we know that they're missing naturally
because the other teeth filled in.
- Also, I noticed something strange about his ears.
The upper hollow of your ear is called the cymba,
and the lower hollow is called the cavum.
And your cymba is usually very narrow and small,
and the cavum is big.
But, with the Somerton Man, it's the other way around.
His ears are inverted.
♪ ♪
Fishburne: Robin Thomson shares
both rare genetic traits.
- So what are the odds of them
having the same ear shapes and sizes
and the same missing two front teeth, the lateral incisors?
What are those odds? They're 1 in 10,000,000.
♪ ♪
- So the obvious question this all raises is:
is the Somerton Man the father of Robin Thomson?
- We just got to look at the facts.
He had a book of love poetry
with the phone number of a lady
who had a child with genetic features very similar to his.
[dramatic music]
Perhaps it's not something sinister,
but it's a matter of the heart.
♪ ♪
- It does seem possible, maybe even likely,
that he comes back into town to reignite an old flame.
And he visits Jo Thomson.
However, he finds out that she's now in a relationship,
she's got a 16-month-old son that is possibly his child.
And putting two and two together,
maybe it's a reason
why she didn't want him in her life anymore.
He's rebuffed.
And, at this point, maybe he had nothing else to live for.
♪ ♪
Back when the Somerton Man was found,
they found a tiny, rolled-up piece of paper
that said "tamám shud."
Well, the English translation of it means
"it is finished" or "it is done."
And could this then be a suicide note?
♪ ♪
Fishburne: But proving this theory will be difficult.
- There's a big question mark over his death,
but where we can find answers is through the man's DNA.
[dramatic music]
- So, in an effort to identify the Somerton Man,
they did a casting of his head.
Dr. Abbott went to examine that casting
and sees that there's actually some hairs.
- This got me excited because I realized
that this could be a source of DNA
that could crack this case.
Fishburne: Next, he tries to find Robin Thomson.
- But Robin Thomson died a couple months before.
And he was cremated, so there's no remains
to get the DNA
to see if he was related to the Somerton Man.
♪ ♪
So I thought to myself,
"Well, has Robin Thomson got any descendants?"
I did some detective work
and I tracked down one of his daughters.
Fishburne: Her name is Rachel Egan,
the daughter of Robin Thomson and Roma Egan.
They toured together in a ballet company.
- And she kindly donated her DNA.
I was able to subtract her DNA and her mother's DNA
to basically reconstruct Robin Thomson's DNA.
I was excited that Rachel agreed to give me her DNA,
but I got a lot more than that.
Fishburne: Abbott and Rachel began dating in 2010
and married just a few months later.
- Sadly, there's not enough DNA material on the hair shafts
to figure out if the Somerton Man is Robin Thomson's father.
Fishburne: Without a DNA match,
the case remains unsolved.
♪ ♪
- Unfortunately, a lot of the evidence
was later thrown out or destroyed.
♪ ♪
The cigarettes, the suitcase,
and perhaps the most important thing that's missing
is the Somerton man's copy of the "Rubáiyát."
- If we had this copy of this book,
we might be able to run DNA testing on it.
We might be able to find new information inside the pages.
But ultimately, that evidence is gone now.
Fishburne: If Abbott and his family and the public
have any chance of closure on the Somerton Man case,
the only way forward is to exhume the body.
- The people of Australia want an answer.
Who was the Somerton Man?
So the stakes are high to get this solved.
- Now that Rachel and I are together and we have a family,
it kind of illustrates the importance
of finding the DNA of the Somerton Man.
If his DNA shows that he's a Russian,
maybe that will bring the spy theory back alive again.
If he's unrelated to us,
it gives some other family some closure
and connect him back to his family.
And if he is somehow related to us,
it will also give us closure.
♪ ♪
- Investigation into this mystery is continuing.
The Somerton Man's body was exhumed in May 2021
in Australia, and DNA analysis is ongoing.
Even if Rachel Egan is the Somerton Man's granddaughter,
it doesn't fully answer what happened
on November 30th, 1948.
But proving the link between the man and Jo Thomson
could be a crucial step in finally closing this case.
I'm Laurence Fishburne.
Thank you for watching "History's Greatest Mysteries."
♪ ♪